how can rapid small area planning processes connect comprehensive plan goals to a new development code?

SUMMARY

In 2019 and 2020, czb partnered with the City of Greenville to craft GVL2040, the city's new comprehensive plan. Following the plan's unanimous adoption in 2021, czb was retained, in a competitive process, to completely rewrite Greenville's development code and update its engineering design and specifications manual. GVL2040 set a clear but novel direction for development in Greenville, and the development code was to become completely different. How could the city modulate the potential impacts of such a fundamental and rapid shift for residents and the development community? The answer was to build in a process of small area planning that would take place alongside the development of the new code. 

Five Character Development Plans were developed in areas that in their totality represented all the different types of places that could be found in Greenville--residential neighborhoods, commercial corridors, and mixed-use nodes primed for more intense development. Local committees of stakeholders helped guide visioning and code testing efforts in each of the five areas, and additional public engagement spread the educational efforts to the broader community. The Character Development planning process connected the "what" and "why" of GVL2040 to the "how" of implementation that would occur in the new development code. For example, key issues of height, density, infill, and the relationship of new development to public rights-of-way were all addressed in the Character Development Plans.